One of the most surprising things about Sony’s big PlayStation 4 reveal was just how much Sony seemed to embrace indie game developers. The physical manifestation of this commitment was Jonathan Blow, the developer behind Braid, up on stage at the presentation announcing that his next game, The Witness, will be coming to PlayStation 4.
Since that time no much has been revealed about The Witness, though Blow did promote the PS4 with a developer conversation video back in May. Today, Sony teased a few details about what to expect with the game.
The Witness will be an open-world puzzle game, though players will be shepherded from easier puzzles toward increasingly complex and mind-numbing puzzles. Players will walk or run around the lonely game world until they approach a puzzle and enter a “draw mode.”
Once in draw mode, players will solve what seems like a simple 2-d maze puzzle, drawing a line from the beginning of the maze to the end. Though the puzzles will start out relatively straightforward, they will quickly advance, adding new rules and becoming harder. Anyone who has played Braid will know just how far Blow can take seemingly simple game mechanics.
The process can be seen in the gameplay video released earlier this year, though even seeing puzzles being solved doesn’t necessarily spoil how they are solved: